"In tragic life, God wot,No villain need be! Passions spin the plot;We are betrayed by what is false within.""I take the hapOf all my deeds. The wind that fills my sailsPropels; but I am helmsman. Am I wrecked,I know the devil has sufficient weightTo bear; I lay it not on him, or fate.Besides, he's damned. That man I do suspectA coward, who would burden the poor deuceWith what ensues from his own slipperiness."
"In tragic life, God wot,
No villain need be! Passions spin the plot;
We are betrayed by what is false within."
"I take the hap
Of all my deeds. The wind that fills my sails
Propels; but I am helmsman. Am I wrecked,
I know the devil has sufficient weight
To bear; I lay it not on him, or fate.
Besides, he's damned. That man I do suspect
A coward, who would burden the poor deuce
With what ensues from his own slipperiness."
The main issue between freedom and fatalism lies in just this question: Is a man's life determined by what he is or by what he does? Does his nature, received through inheritance, moulded by circumstance, determine his acts and so his life? Or does his moral choice determine these?
Extreme fatalists declare that the former is true. Moralists, idealists, believers in freedom, support the latter view.
Now Meredith leaves us no doubt as to his position on the point. Again and again we see his characters choosing their lives. And their choices rest on no inherited nature, but on character. Thus our author declares, by his plots, as in plain words, that "Our deathlessness is in what we do, not in what we are."
As we have said, a writer's thought of life can be best understood from his plots. He builds life, consciously or unconsciously, as he believes that nature builds it. Does he let the righteous perish and the evil man prosper in the end? Then he either does not believe in this law of ours, or in its present successful working. Perhaps, like Victor Hugo, he teaches a higher law, that of self-sacrifice. Perhaps, like some little modern writers, he teaches a lower law of the temporary success, at times, of hypocrisy and deceit. Whatever he believes in and likes to think of, his structure will disclose.
Now one very marked thing about Meredith's structure is the agreement of the two crises, that of character and that of circumstances. When any one of his characters chooses for good or evil, for wisdom or folly, at that very time, and by that very choice, he decides his future happiness and success, or unhappiness and failure. Therein lies the decision of the question whether that particular novel shall be a tragedy or a comedy.
When Dahlia Fleming chooses evil, she chooses unhappiness. No kind Providence intervenes to save her from her harvest. How many of our little writers of to-day would have caused her marriage with Edward to take place in the end! Is not Meredith's conclusion far more true to life?
When Diana of the Cross-Ways resists Percy's temptings and is led by her hatred of his evil to betray his secret, she chooses for her own happiness in the end. The storms through which she goes to reach it are the natural result of her impulsive, unbalanced mind.
Stronger still is the teaching in 'The Tragic Comedians.' When Clotilde chooses the craven's part to play, she chooses also the craven's reward.
It is in his scientific insight into moral life that Meredith's growth beyond Beowulf, Shakespeare, and even Browning appears. We of the nineteenth century would be sorry to think that we had not one master who goes even deeper into our modern life than these. We believe that, as men of the later twentieth century look back upon our day, they will call George Meredith our greatest literary exponent.
Beowulf asserts the general truth that Circumstance and Character determine Destiny.
Shakespeare has not gone very much farther in the philosophy of life. He teaches that character determines character, and that circumstance determines circumstance; and that, in some way, circumstance obeys character.
Browning would advance a step and teach us, as his age taught the world, that the dependence of the external upon the spiritual comes about through the agency of a personal God.
But Meredith takes up the cry of our scientific age, and says: "The god of this world is in the machine, not out of it."
This is no irreverent teaching, for Meredith is not irreverent. It is simply the search for primary causes. It is the result of the same tendency that leads us to be dissatisfied with calling typhoid fever a "dispensation of Providence," and to lay it to bad drains. Like evolution in the physical world, this theory does not tend to remove God, but to explain more fully his agency and methods. It is no new theory. But the manner of its teaching is as new as this latter nineteenth century of ours.
If one were to compare Meredith with Shakespeare on this subject, one would naturally coordinate Macbeth and Rhoda Fleming, Diana of the Cross-Ways and King Lear.
'Rhoda Fleming' is, like 'Macbeth,' a tale with a moral purpose. The dependence of fate on the moral choice is its chief thought. The book gains force, as all these novels do, from its striking characterizations. We see Dahlia, the fair-haired one, whose great failing is weakness,--the fault of a negative character. And we see plainly the long process of pain to which she thereby subjects herself in the course of her purification.
Rhoda, her sister has, on the other hand, the defects of the positive character. She is head-strong, over-proud. It is from these characteristics that she suffers or leads others to suffer. "The Fates that mould us, always work from the main-spring."
In her relations with Anthony Hope, Rhoda takes the part of the tempter. The interview between the two shows such wonderful insight into character that from this passage alone Meredith might be ranked as great. Rhoda discovers that she has sold her sister in marriage to a brute. In her head-strong desire to buy her off from him, she goes to her uncle to beg for a large sum of money. Anthony, although a poor man in reality, has always delighted in deceiving his brother and his nieces on that point. Rhoda finds him struggling with the greatest temptation of his life. He has carried home money belonging to the bank of which he is a trusted employee. His love of money, his former deceit, make him very weak before Rhoda. So he falls. She is allowed to take with her the money she wants. As the reader looks back over the story, he sees that the money will prove useless for her ends, and that his fall will ruin her uncle's life. Meredith here shows himself a master of tragedy.
The life of the strong, impulsive, young Robert is not so dependent upon the crises of temptation. For he knows himself and lives with a constant purpose to conquer himself. His purpose is stronger than his passions. In respect to his obedience to Socrates's favorite maxim, he is a man rare even in our self-conscious age. What shall we say of Edward, "villain and hero in one"? Like Dahlia he loses his life's happiness through his besetting sin. Several times a courageous word said that ought to be said, or a brave deed done that should have been done might have saved him. And each time he proves himself a coward, until it is too late. Like the children of Israel he would not enter the promised land for fear of the inhabitants thereof. Like them too, he atoned by spending his forty years in the wilderness, and there laying down his life.
We must not neglect the "fascinating Peggy Lovell,"--a coquette whose charm even a woman can feel. Avarice and love of pleasure are her besetting sins. And avarice leads her to her fate. She has chosen to sow her wild oats and to accrue her debts. These she pays, as we all must in one way or another, with herself. Her way is to marry the man who can pay them rather than the man she loves.
One and all, major and minor characters, they come to the crises of their destinies. One after another chooses according to his character his life. This is Meredith's teaching.
But our author is not always sounding the very depths of life. He is no preacher, but a painter of human nature. The power of mind has a large place in his books. "Drink of faith in the brains a full draught," he tells us; and again:--"To read with a soul in the mirror of mind Is man's chief lesson."
'Diana of the Cross-Ways' teaches the partial failure, the temporary unhappiness, that result from lack of mental balance. It is the story of a charming, brilliant, but impulsive woman who makes many mistakes and who suffers from them. Diana is capable of loving one unworthy of her, and for such lack of wisdom she pays dearly. Yet she holds firmly and purely to the right and so wins happiness in the end. She is foolish sometimes, but she is not a fool. Hence her story is not a tragedy.
This novelist-philosopher has taught us, then, that folly tends to bring failure, but that righteousness is stronger than folly. He is not content to stop in his teachings even here. In 'The Tragic Comedians' he goes still further, and deals with the interrelations of the moral and intellectual. For character rules intellect, as intellect reacts upon character.
'The Tragic Comedians' begins with the birth of a love. With Clotilde, daughter of a highly respectable, but very conventional citizen, Alvan, a Jew and demagogue, a man of widespread and somewhat notorious reputation, falls in love. Clotilde is a beautiful, bright woman; interesting, but cowardly. Like all Meredith's heroes and heroines, she has her besetting sin.
To this sudden, overpowering new love Clotilde yields her heart, but will not yield her actions. She is afraid. While Alvan would go at once to her parents to ask for her hand, Clotilde, seeing only too plainly how little hope there is of obtaining their consent, prefers to dally with matters, and insists on his postponing the interview. Alvan's straightforward nature cannot understand such half-way measures. He leaves her unsought for a time, and begins to fade out of Clotilde's mind. Suddenly, when in the mountains with a friend, she hears that Alvan is near. She wants him then, and goes to seek him. Again he misunderstands her. This time he asks her to run away with him, but she refuses, seeming not so much shocked as afraid. She answers, not in a womanly, straightforward way, but with an evasion. Then she consents to let him speak to her father and mother. She addresses them first on the subject, but is met with a torrent of angry words. The poor thing cannot stand that. In her weakness she makes her next great mistake, and runs away to Alvan, beseeching him to marry her secretly. The woman who would not listen to his request for this very thing but a day or two before now begs for it. She finds that it is too late. Her lover, in his pride, has determined to meet her parents on their own ground. He will win her, he now declares, by conventional methods. So he takes her to a friend's home. It is there that the chief crisis of the book takes place, a crisis which is one of the most interesting I know in literature. It is a moral crisis.
Clotilde has come to it through various steps of weakness. Alvan has reached it through pride and its reaction from his former shady life to a desire for conventionalism. A strong man who had before obeyed conventional rules might there have thrown them aside. To Alvan, on account of their long disuse, they seemed more precious than they need.
So Alvan meets the crisis overconfident in his strength. Clotilde meets it afraid, cowering in her weakness. Of her state Meredith says:
"Men and women alike, who renounce their own individuality by cowering thus abjectly under some other before the storm, are in reality abjuring their idea of that other, and offering themselves up to the genius of Power in whatsoever direction it may chance to be manifested, in whatsoever person. We no sooner shut our eyes than we consent to be prey, we lose the soul of election."
Alvan handed Clotilde back to her parents. She meekly did what he said. She was hurt. She could not understand his action. Had she but stood up against this mistake, he might have had pity on her even yet. Or, had he not changed his own rigid determination, the action might have prevented that worst result, the weakening of her belief in him. There is nothing like cowardice to destroy one's faith in others. There is nothing like courageous action to clear away those mists of doubt. Clotilde's "craven" will began to demoralize her mind.
But her chance is not over yet. She may still cling to Alvan. Doubtless he will seek her, he has not given her up. Ah, but circumstances were too strong. For the craven they are always too strong. By a short imprisonment, by family storms and prayers, Clotilde is reduced to external subjection. The disorder of her mind increases.
While submitting to her father's command, while writing words of dismissal to Alvan, and even accepting the attentions of a former suitor, she still says in her heart of hearts that she will always be loyal to him. How peculiar seems the twisting, "serpentine" nature! She still waits for Alvan to save her from the chains she daily forges for herself. Meanwhile Alvan does his best. He uses all means,-- conventional and otherwise. He finally forces permission from Clotilde's father to hold a free interview with Clotilde. She is to tell him openly and freely whether she will marry him or not. So he hopes to free her of coercion.
So far as circumstances are concerned, there is now nothing to prevent a happy ending; but from moral causes it is impossible.
The chains she has forged for herself are too strong. Her fancies have become diseased by long straining to a cowardly deceit. She think's Alvan's messengers deceitful too.
So she refuses. She throws away thereby her last chance. And yet--can we believe it?--she still hopes. Alvan has done his best and has failed. His friends have tried to help him. Circumstance has given away before them. And she has thrown away their help--yet she still hopes. Alvan sends a challenge to her father. Prince Marko accepts it, and now her shuddering trust is in Providence. Marko will be killed. Now Alvan shall have her hand. But "Providence" does not save her. Alvan is killed, and Prince Marko returns Clotilde cannot understand it. She is stunned, but recovers sufficiently to marry Prince Marko.
"Not she, it was the situation they had created which was guilty," she had thought.
"The craven with desires expecting to be blest is a zealot of the faith which ascribes the direction of events to the outer world."
Of Alvan's death, Meredith says some very characteristic words. Let me quote once again:
"He perished of his weakness, but it was a strong man that fell."
"He was 'a tragic comedian,' one of the lividly ludicious, whom we cannot laugh at, but must contemplate, to distinguish where their character strikes the note of discord with life; for otherwise, in the reflection of their history, life will seem a thing demoniacally inclined by fits to antic and dive into gulfs."
This, then, is George Meredith's message. We have eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the power to choose between the two has entered into our souls. We are under the rule of a great overhanging law. Destiny's wheels we cannot stop, but through our capacity for moral choice, our hands lie on the button that moves the whole machine in its relation to our own individual lives.
This is a great lesson. How strong in its likeness to the teachings of our great masters of the past! How needful in its new scientific form to-day! How suggestive as to the universe! Does it not follow that as our lives are planned so is this universe planned in which we live! Does it not follow that the spiritual is the central life upon which all else depends? It is the teaching of the childhood of the race, broadened through knowledge of life's passion, humbled and heightened through sight of God's hand, strengthened and widened through the opening of our eyes in modern science to a fuller and clearer knowledge, not only of the machinery of the universe, but also of its motive power.
Emily G. Hooker.
The "Tragedy of Hamlet" has its origin in the murder of Hamlet's father, its development in Hamlet's preparation for revenge, and its consummation in the murderer's death. It is well summed up in the Anglicized title of the old German play, 'Fratricide Punished,' ('Hamlet,' Variorum Edition, Furness, Vol. II., p. 121). In the progress of this tragedy Ophelia's own sad story has no part or lot. She is in it, but not of it, and her relationship to it is an episode. Like 'The Murder of Gonzago,' however, it is a tragedy within the tragedy, but it turns wholly upon the loves of Hamlet and Ophelia, their interruption, and its result. For this reason it is greatly shorn of detail, and therefore doubtless it has always been regarded as a mystery.
"The Tragedy of Ophelia" opens with a narrative of Hamlet's ardent pursuit of Ophelia with vows of love, the surrender of her maiden heart to him, and their free and bounteous interviews thereafter. Here the action of the drama begins, and her father, doubting the integrity of Hamlet's purpose, forbids her further reception of his attentions, and, apparently without explanation made to Hamlet, she obeys him. Of what Hamlet thinks or says of this we are not in terms informed, and can only infer it from his conduct towards her afterwards. But that conduct was of a most extraordinary character, seeming to many students of the play to be inexplicable. The explanations of others may be resolved into three theories, each of which deserves a passing notice. It has been claimed that insanity will account for it, and indeed Hamlet's treatment of Ophelia has been the chief argument advanced in proof of his insanity; but it is incredible that Shakespeare should have devoted the only two interviews which he had with her, and which had so important an influence upon her life, to the mere vaporings of a madman. It has been suggested that he is putting on "an antic disposition," as he had foretold he would, with a view to deceiving the King concerning his intentions, and such conduct would have been fitting with the temptress in Belleforest's 'Hystorie,' (Ibid., 91); but Shakespeare has transformed the creature of that story into Hamlet's gentle sweetheart, and so to lacerate her soul by way of subterfuge would have been an act of unjustifiable brutality, of which he could by no means have been guilty. It has been urged that his mind's eye is jaundiced by his mother's gross behavior, and that thereupon he turns distrustfully from womankind; but long after his mother's wicked marriage, perhaps a month afterwards, he is reveling in Ophelia's love,--a balm that gracious Nature often pours on bleeding hearts. And further, from either of these points of view, the sudden and extravagant change in Hamlet's feelings towards Ophelia, the cruel harshness of his speech to her soon after, and his subsequent complete indifference to her, are beyond the requirements of the situation, and the theories therefore seem rather to perplex than to explain.
Undoubtedly the cause of this is that they seek the solution of the riddle in the effect on Hamlet's relations to Ophelia of prior incidents in the play, his father's murder, his mother's marriage to the murderer, and the ghostly mission of revenge. But there are in the situation at the end of Act I of 'Hamlet' and wholly unconnected with these incidents, all the elements of a tragedy, few and simple, but profoundly significant. Thus, we have a prince who is an ardent lover, a court lady who has as ardently returned his love, the lady's sudden and unexplained refusal to see or hear from him, her ambitious and time-serving courtier father, and for a King a "remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain." Let but a spark of jealous suspicion reach such a mixture, and there must be an explosion; with a war-hardened Othello-like titanic rage and murder, but with the softer Hamlet renunciation and reproach, and with poor Ophelia, who represses her feelings always, heart-break, insanity, and death.
Now, Hamlet is pictured as one of the most suspicious of men, and in particular at this juncture about his mortal enemy the King. In addition, he is very proud and very revengeful, as he admits, and there is every indication that he has been passionately fond of Ophelia. When therefore she persistently denies herself to him in private, though doubtless a regular attendant at the functions of the court, his suspicions are excited, his pride wounded, his anger aroused; and, with "the pangs of despis'd love" in his heart, and in his mind a tumult of conflicting thoughts, he suddenly presents himself before her, resolved to know the truth. "What damned moments counts he o'er Who dotes, yet doubts,--suspects, yet fondly loves." In Quarto I she says: "He found me walking in the gallery, all alone"; that is, in the gallery of the King's palace,--(compare lines 673 and 803),--and of course within reach of the King; and, though Shakespeare afterwards transferred this scene to her chamber in her father's house, it may not be overlooked that the remarkable interview of which Ophelia tells was conceived originally as occurring on the impulse of the moment and under stress of feeling caused apparently, by Hamlet's unexpected and dumbfoundering discovery:
"He took me by the wrist and held me hard.Then goes he to the length of all his arm,And, with his other hand thus o'er his brow,He falls to such perusal of my faceAs he would draw it. Long time stayed he so.At last--a little shaking of my arm,And thrice his head thus waving up and down--He raised a sigh so piteous and profoundAs it did seem to shatter all his bulkAnd end his being. That done, he lets me go,And with his head over his shoulder turnedHe seemed to find his way without his eyes;For out o' doors he went without their help,And to the last bended their light on me."
"He took me by the wrist and held me hard.
Then goes he to the length of all his arm,
And, with his other hand thus o'er his brow,
He falls to such perusal of my face
As he would draw it. Long time stayed he so.
At last--a little shaking of my arm,
And thrice his head thus waving up and down--
He raised a sigh so piteous and profound
As it did seem to shatter all his bulk
And end his being. That done, he lets me go,
And with his head over his shoulder turned
He seemed to find his way without his eyes;
For out o' doors he went without their help,
And to the last bended their light on me."
In that harsh grip is anger, in that long study of her face the search for truth, in his silence the wounded pride that cannot utter his suspicions, in the triple nod the confirmation of their verity, in the sigh the efflux of his love, in the hand-shaking a farewell, and in the retroverted face a hope yet lingering but doomed to disappointment. For Ophelia still utters no word of explanation, and Hamlet the lover leaves her forever.
The renunciation of Ophelia at this interview is generally conceded, but the reason assigned for it is the incompatibility of Hamlet's passion for her with his mission of revenge;--a most unsatisfactory explanation, because after the Ghost's command was laid on him he still pursued her, for it was after that that she says: "I did refuse his letters and denied his access to me." There is apparently an interval of two months between Acts I and II of Hamlet, and during this period Hamlet has evidently been brooding over his father's murder and considering the means of executing his dread command, and he has doubtless been vexing his soul over the conduct of Ophelia until he can stand the strain no longer. In immediate sequence in the play his silent interview with her follows upon her denial of herself to him, and an echo of the bitter feeling then aroused in him is subsequently heard, when he tells her that the prologue to the players' scene is brief "as woman's love";--sometimes mistakenly supposed to refer to the Queen, whose defection did not occur for more than thirty years after her marriage. If Hamlet's belief in an intrigue between her and the King be assumed, it fully explains his conduct before, at, and after his renunciation of Ophelia, and it would seem that no other theory can explain it adequately.
When Othello is brooding over the supposed delinquencies of Desdemona, tortured by commingled love and hate, in his wrath he strikes her. Afterwards he demands: "Let me see your eyes; look in my face"; and as she does so, and he searches there for her innocence and finds it not, he bitterly adjures her: "Swear thou art honest," though all the while assured that she is "false as hell." And he weeps and laments over her at the very moment that he determines upon an eternal separation. Othello's interview with Desdemona and this interview of Hamlet's with Ophelia are identical in outline, and they differ in detail only as the character of the two men differ. Shakespeare has told us in words that Othello is jealously suspicious of Desdemona, and with equal faithfulness he has depicted jealous suspicion in the acts of Hamlet.
This mute interview between Hamlet and Ophelia reminds one of the "Dumb Shew," which precedes the scene from the drama of 'Gonzago's Murder'; and as in the latter instance the Duke and Duchess afterwards put into words the thoughts which the pantomime foreshadows, so on examination will this be found to be the case in the second interview between Hamlet and Ophelia, which immediately follows upon his great soliloquy.
This second interview concludes Scene i of Act III in Quarto II and in the Folios, but in Quarto I it is in Act II, and logically it belongs there. Act I of 'Hamlet' was designed to disclose the relation of the several characters to each other, and the command imposed on Hamlet to avenge his Father's death upon the King; and Act II was originally intended to exhibit Hamlet erratically making ready to obey the Ghost's command, and the various artifices which the King employs to detect his hidden purpose. When Ophelia tells her father of Hamlet's wordless interview with her, Polonius promptly goes to the King with the story of their amours and his termination of them, and with the announcement that Hamlet is mad for his daughter's love; and, after hearing his reasons for this opinion, being impressed by them, naturally the first thought of the King is: "How may we try it further?" To this Polonius replies: "I'll loose my daughter to him" during one of his walks in the gallery here, whilst you and I, unseen but seeing, will witness their encounter. In Quarto I the meeting between Hamlet and Ophelia follows at once, and when it fails Polonius undertakes to board him, and when that fails Rosencrantz and Guildenstern assay him. Afterwards Shakespeare saw fit to change the order of these scenes, but this particular scene may properly be considered now, and before others which it logically precedes.
In the interpretation of this interview, as of the former, commentators have been misled by the assumption that it is in some way connected with Hamlet's mission of revenge, and consequently they have found it, as has been suggested, a veritablepons asinorum. Apart from the three theories above referred to, there is an attempt to explain it on the hypothesis that when Hamlet meets Ophelia in the palace, whither he has been sent for by the King for the express purpose of meeting her, but "as 'twere by accident," he at once suspects the ruse, and therefore talks in the extraordinary manner recorded of him; that is, that he is rude and brutal, and refuses to yield to his feelings of affection, in order to deceive the King, who he well knows is within hearing, or to punish Ophelia, who he is assured is spying on him. But this theory seems to be wholly without support in the text. In the first place, there is not a word which indicates that he suspects the King's presence, and, on the contrary, the delivery of the soliloquy, the admission that he is revengeful and ambitious, and the covert threat to kill the King, all tend to prove that he does not suspect it. Further, such a suspicion could reasonably originate only in the fact that the King had sent for him, and that instead of the King he found Ophelia, but it is to be remembered that in Quarto I the King does not send for him, and that the meeting is in fact accidental. Conceding the suspicion, however, for argument's sake, whilst it might induce Hamlet to be reticent or cautious in his speech, it does not explain why Shakespeare put into his mouth the denunciatory language he employs, and this is after all the vital question. It cannot have been in order to deceive the King by concealing his love for Ophelia, for such concealment must necessarily undeceive him; the King, Queen, and Polonius are all deluded into believing him mad for Ophelia's love, and this test is expected to confirm them in it; but we know that in fact the King is undeceived, for his comment is: "Love! His affections do not that way tend; Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little, Was not like madness." Were he profuse in his protestations of love, the King might indeed be deceived into believing that it is not his conduct, but Ophelia's, which troubles Hamlet; for herein the situation differs from that narrated by Belleforest, the lady there being a mere vulgar temptress, whose preconcerted blandishments Hamlet shrewdly refuses to yield to. As for Ophelia's spying on him, it is untenable; for she also expects that Hamlet will exhibit affection for her, and, were he to do so, instead of betraying his secret, she would aid him in concealing it. It seems plain from his inquiry that Hamlet sees Polonius during the interview, but it is not probable that he believes Ophelia to be cognizant of his presence; her answer is a denial of such knowledge, and Hamlet's succeeding sarcastic speech is meant for the conscience of Polonius, not for hers. The worst that he could say to her is said before the discovery of her father, and before her falsehood, and hence the discovery and the falsehood do not serve to explain it. Nothing can explain it satisfactorily, but Hamlet's conviction that she has transferred her affections to the King.
After Hamlet has for some time been in the King's chamber, whether it is with or without the King's request, he meets Ophelia there, and he finds her apparently waiting for some one, and whiling away the time by reading. So it has been pre-arranged, and so it seems to him. Plainly she has not been waiting for him, for, though he himself has been waiting, she has not addressed him, and in the end he first accosts her. Indeed, it has been planned that their meeting shall seem to him to be "by accident," and, so seeming, the idea of her waiting for him is precluded. Hence to him, already suspicious of her integrity, she must have come to meet the King. But he has before this been convinced of such an intrigue, as above shown, and because of it has renounced her; and accordingly he petitions her lightly, if not ironically: "Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember'd." Their meeting is on the same day as, or certainly not more than one day later than, the speechless interview; but Ophelia ignores that, and ignores his petition also, and inquires into the state of his health "for this many a day,"--that is, since Polonius has separated them,--to which he responds gravely, and without show of affection. Thereupon ensues the following conversation:
"Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yoursThat I have longed long to redeliver;I pray you now receive them."Ham. No, not I;I never gave you aught."Oph. My honor'd lord, you know right well you did, And with them words of so sweet breath compos'd As made the things more rich. Their perfume lost, Take them again; for to the noble mind Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind."
"Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yoursThat I have longed long to redeliver;I pray you now receive them.
"Ham. No, not I;I never gave you aught.
"Oph. My honor'd lord, you know right well you did, And with them words of so sweet breath compos'd As made the things more rich. Their perfume lost, Take them again; for to the noble mind Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind."
It seems clear that Ophelia returns these remembrances in pursuance of her father's orders, express or implied; that Hamlet repudiates them because, proud and sensitive, he would blot their old associations from his memory; and that Ophelia insists on their return with a sad and tender recollection of those music-vows of love that he has made so often. But why she should accuse him of unkindness towards her is not so clear, since it is she who has broken off their intimacy. Her meaning is not doubtful in Quarto I, where this reference to Hamlet's unkindness follows upon his comments on her honesty, and evidently refers to them. But in Quarto II Shakespeare changes the order of the conversation, and so apparently intends to make Ophelia's suggestion of unkindness refer to Hamlet's visit to her closet. Hence he had not only frightened her at that interview, as she informed her father, but he had hurt her, she realizes that he had renounced her, and in this gentle way she now upbraids him. But Hamlet, wrought to sudden fury by the reminiscence, like Othello, can see nothing but the supposed wrong which she has done him, and, like Othello, charges her with unchastity, without indicating the suspected man:
"Ham. Ha, ha! are you honest?"Oph. My lord?"Ham. Are you fair?"Oph. What means your lordship!"Ham. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit of no discourse to your beauty."Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?"Ham. Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd, than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof."
"Ham. Ha, ha! are you honest?
"Oph. My lord?
"Ham. Are you fair?
"Oph. What means your lordship!
"Ham. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit of no discourse to your beauty.
"Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?
"Ham. Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd, than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof."
Though expressed figuratively, there can be no doubt of Hamlet's intention in this passage to warn Ophelia against some temptation then assailing her, which is attacking her virtue through the medium of her beauty, and which will probably prevail over it. It concerns her "honesty,"--a virtuous woman being honest in respect of others who have claims on her, and chaste in respect of herself,--and undoubtedly it refers to the temptation which assails all women who win unscrupulous admirers by their charms, and to which they sometimes succumb. In Ophelia's case it has been to Hamlet an impossible possibility that she could prove unfaithful to him, but here and now, since he has discovered her secret visit to the King, it has become reality.
Then, as the scene proceeds, Hamlet in a breath admits and denies his former love for her, thus plainly repudiating any present affection. (This conclusion is entirely consistent with his declaration "I lov'd Ophelia" in the grave-yard scene). Here he renounces her in words, as formerly he had renounced her by signs. Then he denounces himself and his "old stock" as being without virtue, and concludes the subject by declaring: "We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery." Here he unmistakeably warns her against the King, for of that old stock only they two are left. To the blandishments of both she has yielded, as he supposes, and since Hamlet no longer loves her, and the King but lusts after her, her only safe retreat is in a nunnery. In those old days a nunnery was often the only refuge for a woman who was fancied by a king, if she would retain her purity.
At this juncture Hamlet discovers Polonius, as is evident by his suggestion that he had better remain at home when he desires to play the fool; if the remark were not intended for his ear, it would be absurd. Of course he realizes that Polonius has been listening to their conversation, but he does not betray his knowledge, though the rest of his comments are perhaps more particularly intended for Polonius's ear. His words turn "wild and whirling," Ophelia notes the change, and her responses change in tone accordingly. He protests that though she marries she must lose that immediate jewel of her soul of which Iago prates, or that she will transform her husband into the horned monster of Othello's fears. And then he inveighs against wanton womankind in general, but in such terms as might befit the woman he supposes that she has become. He puts on "an antic disposition" for the benefit of Polonius, but under it all is the pointed notice to Ophelia that their past relationship can never be renewed, and the masked charge that it is her adoption of the ways of her frail sisters that has made him mad,--as her words indicate that she supposes him to be,--and that has wrecked the future happiness of both of them.
When Hero is charged by Claudio with unchastity, she fancies that something must be wrong with him, and says: "Is my lord well, that he doth speak so wild?" Of Othello's accusation Desdemona thinks that "something, sure, of state ... Hath puddled his clear spirit." In a similar frame of mind Ophelia entreats: "Ye heavenly powers restore him," and bewails the overthrow of Hamlet's reason. These three tender hearted women are singularly alike in their mental attitudes under the accusation, and but too willing to extenuate the cruel blow and to forgive it. But both Hero and Desdemona defend themselves against the charge, whilst Ophelia, maintaining her habitual reticence, neither admits nor denies anything, and Hamlet's conviction of her wrongdoing with the King remains unchanged.
Thus far Hamlet has made no direct charge of the transfer of Ophelia's affections from him to another, but he seems to do this at their next interview, which takes place at the time of the play of 'Gonzago's Murder.' There is a bitterness towards her in his speech, a brutality in his obscene allusions, and a degree of heartlessness in it all, which can be excused--if indeed it be deemed excusable--only on the theory that he believes her to have herself become a heartless, wicked woman. When he is commenting on the facts of the play, and Ophelia suggests that he is "as good as a chorus," he snarlingly replies: "I could interpret between you and your love if I could see the puppets dallying." Everything which Hamlet says is pregnant with meaning, and Ophelia evidently regards this as a keen thrust at her, which it plainly is. Both of them know that they two are no longer lovers, and each of them therefore understands that the allusion is to some other man with whom she treads "the primrose path of dalliance." As usual Ophelia does not deny the charge, and it would not be singular if Hamlet were to accept her silence as an admission of its truth. To whom she thinks that he refers does not appear, but there can be no doubt that his conviction is that her new lover is the King.
The next incident indicating this conviction is the interview in which Polonius undertakes with much complacency to "board" the Prince:
"Pol. Do you know me, my lord?"Ham. Excellent well; you are a fishmonger."Pol. Not I, my lord."Ham. Then I would you were so honest a man."Pol. Honest, my lord?"Ham. Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand."Pol. That's very true, my lord."Ham. For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion--Have you a daughter?"Pol. I have, my lord."Ham. Let her not walk i' the sun. Conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look to it."Pol. How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter. Yet he knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger. He is far gone, far gone." [aside].
"Pol. Do you know me, my lord?
"Ham. Excellent well; you are a fishmonger.
"Pol. Not I, my lord.
"Ham. Then I would you were so honest a man.
"Pol. Honest, my lord?
"Ham. Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.
"Pol. That's very true, my lord.
"Ham. For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion--Have you a daughter?
"Pol. I have, my lord.
"Ham. Let her not walk i' the sun. Conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look to it.
"Pol. How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter. Yet he knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger. He is far gone, far gone." [aside].
There has been much discussion of this passage, but no satisfactory solution of it. It is a good sample of the enigmatic style of speech characteristic of Hamlet, which presumably the audiences of Shakespeare's day comprehended, which of course the astute Polonius did not understand, and which puzzles later generations because they have lost the ancient significance of certain words. Polonius is so prejudiced in favor of his theory that it was "the very ecstacy of love" that troubled Hamlet, that he does not even attempt to fathom his allusions. And yet Hamlet's last remark, warning him about his daughter, rivets his attention, and he demands to know what is meant by it; but it is only for an instant, his illusion again diverts him from the matter, and the chance of explanation thus escapes.
Malone says that "fishmonger" was a cant term for a "wencher"; and in Barnabe Rich's 'Irish Hubbub' is the expression "senex fornicator, an old fishmonger." Possibly this is its primary significance in Hamlet's mind, for shortly afterwards he satirically says of Polonius to the players: "He's for a jig, or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps." In several instances Shakespeare similarly alludes to "fishing"; as in 'Measure for Measure,' i, 2, 91: "Groping for trouts in a peculiar river"; 'Winter's Tale,' i, 2, 195: "And his pond fish'd by his next neighbor"; and possibly in 'Antony and Cleopatra,' i, 4, 4: "He fishes, drinks, and wastes the lamps of night in revels." The word "monger" in compound words, as used by Shakespeare, does not always mean a trader in the article, but sometimes one who merely indulges in the act; as in 'Love's Labour's Lost,' ii, 1, 253: "Thou art an old love-monger"; in 'Romeo and Juliet,' ii, 4, 30: "These strange flies, these fashion-mongers"; and in 'Measure for Measure,' v, 1, 337: "Was the Duke a fleshmonger?" In common usage the word has this double significance, indeed, dependent upon whether its adjunct refers to a thing or to an act; as, for example, cheesemonger and scandalmonger, and other similar compounds which will readily suggest themselves. Hence "fishmonger" means both one given to "fishing" and a trader in fish. And doubtless the latter is its most important significance in Hamlet's mind, when Polonius denies that he is a fishmonger, namely that he is a trader in a food which from time immemorial has been supposed to be an aphrodisiac. Wherefore we are to understand Hamlet as meaning that Polonius is not so honest a man as the fishmonger that Polonius has in mind, or the senex fornicator that he originally had in mind, but that he is a fleshmonger,--a pander, as Tieck puts it;--"traders in flesh" such persons are termed in 'Troilus and Cressida,' v, 11, 46. It is supposed by Tieck that the allusion is to the way in which Polonius threw Hamlet and Ophelia together, by Friesen that it refers to his pandering to the desires of Claudius and the Queen before the old King's death, and by Doering that it points to his promotion of the o'er-hasty marriage of the King and Queen. But the foregoing discussion shows that the secondary thought in Hamlet's mind is that for some personal end Polonius permits Ophelia to accept the King's attentions, knowing the necessary effect of her youth and beauty on his licentious nature; for at his last interview with her he saw her father also, though apparently hiding from both of them, and therefore believes that he was cognizant of the fact that she had gone to the palace privately to meet the King. It is evidently this belief which inspires him with the contempt which he afterwards exhibits towards Polonius.
His next speech manifests this contempt in a notable degree, but it has been unappreciated because of the failure to perceive the significance of the word "sun." It is an argument intended to enforce what he had already said, and, supplying the omitted portion, the whole runs thus: You are not honest, and you cannot be honest; "for if the sun (in the sky) breed maggots in a dead dog, being a (heavenly) god kissing carrion," even so will the sun of this realm (the King) engender misdeeds in you, a corrupt man caressed by an earthly god. In characteristic fashion Shakespeare uses "sun" in a double sense, as he has just used "fishmonger," and again the occult reference is to Polonius as a procurer for the King.
And Hamlet follows this up by the warning concerning Ophelia; "Let her not walk i' the sun (shine of the King's favor); conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive (if she does so)." "Sun" in this passage means "sunshine" or "sunlight," as in ordinary usage it often does, but it is the light of the sun of royalty that he has just mentioned.
Hamlet's meaning is made so plain by this construction, that it scarcely needs argument to enforce it. It may however be remarked that, assuming its correctness in respect of the declaration that Polonius is not so honest as a fishmonger, its correctness as to the sun's breeding maggots in carrion and causing conception in Ophelia necessarily follows. The three enigmatical statements, thus interpreted, complement and explain each other, and therefore tend to prove each other; and the proof is strengthened by the fact that they are the sequelae of a single thought, namely, his belief in an intrigue between Ophelia and the King. On the other hand, conceding such a belief, a man of Hamlet's character would most naturally think these thoughts, and utter them in characteristic style to Ophelia's father:--The King breeds corruption in you as does the sun in a carrion dog, you are risking your daughter's honor to win his favor, and the experiment will probably end in her dishonor. Hence Hamlet's alleged belief, deduced from his three interviews with Ophelia, and these three resulting comments tend to prove each other's correctness.
Again, the sun is plainly credited by Hamlet with a double function, namely, corruptly breeding life in a dead dog and in a living woman, and the only possible means of harmonizing the two' statements, and of making sense out of the latter, is to assume that some man is typified by the second sun. It is generally admitted that an uncompleted argument is introduced by the particle "for," and, such being the case, it is a fair assumption that that also shall contain a reference to "the sun" as doing something which a man may do. On such an assumption, the argument is readily followed up: "For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog," so must "the sun" breed dishonesty in you, and so may "the sun" cause your daughter to conceive. These three propositions are consistent, the logical connection between them is perfect, and their reason and purpose is clear, if the term "sun" may figuratively indicate "the King."
Now, it is to be observed that Shakespeare not infrequently refers to kings as suns, and likens them to gods. When the King has pardoned her son, the Duchess of York exclaims: "A god on earth thou art"; 'Richard II,' v, 3, 136. "Kings are earth's gods," says Pericles; 'Pericles,' i, 1, 103. And again he says of the King, his father, that he "Had princes sit like stars about his throne, And he the sun, for them to reverence,"Ibid., II, iii, 40, In 'Henry VIII,' i, 1, 6, Buckingham, referring to the meeting of the Kings of England and France on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, styles them "Those suns of glory, those two lights of men." And Norfolk tells of the wondrous deeds done there, "when these suns (For so they phrase them) by their heralds challenged The noble spirits to arms";Ibid., i, 1, 33. Again, adverting to the manner in which Cardinal Woolsey overshadows all other men in the King's favor, Buckingham says: "I wonder That such a keech can with his very bulk Take up the rays o' th' beneficial sun, And keep it from the earth";Ibid., i, 1, 56. When the Cardinal has procured the King to arrest him, Buckingham foresees his speedy death, and again uses this metaphor in a passage which has been much misunderstood,Ibid., i. 1, 236: "I am the shadow of poor Buckingham, Whose figure even this instant cloud puts on By dark'ning my clear sun"; that is, whose body was even that moment entombed by the darkening of the King's countenance against him; he was already a dead man. (Compare the thought: "Darkness does the face of earth entomb When living light should kiss it"; 'Macbeth,' ii, 4, 10).[1]In like manner, in 'King John,' ii, i, 500, the Dauphin of France refers to himself as King, when he says to his father that his shadow, visible in the eye of the Princess, "Becomes a sun and makes your son a shadow." In Richard II,' iii, 2, 50, the King, likening himself to the sun, says that, as the "eye of heaven" reveals the dark deeds of night when he fires the proud tops of the eastern pines, "So when this thief, this traitor, Bolingbroke ... Shall see us rising on our throne, the east, His treasons will sit blushing in his face." And again,Ibid., iv, 1, 260, transferring the metaphor to Bolingbroke, he wails: "O, that I were a mockery King of snow Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke, To melt myself away in waterdrops." In '1 Henry IV,' iii, 2, 79, the King speaks of "sunlike majesty, When it shines seldom in admiring eyes." In 'Richard III.' i, 1, 1, Gloster says, referring to the King: "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York." In 'Hamlet,' i, 2, 67, the King asks Hamlet: "How is it that the clouds still hang on you?" and he ironically replies: "Not so, my lord, I am too much i' the sun." Here again "sun" means "sunshine," and Hamlet, choosing to understand the King literally, and referring to the fact that clouds are dissipated by a genial sun, sneeringly protests that he is too much in the sunshine of royalty to have clouds hanging about him. Referring to a different effect of the sun's warmth, Prince John speaks of "The man that sits within a monarch's heart And ripens in the sunshine of his favor"; '2 Henry IV,' iv, 2, 12. There are other similar uses of the word "sun," which need not now be cited.
The last reference to Ophelia's supposed relation to the King occurs when Polonius comes to announce the presence of the players: